ABSTRACT
Let me say at the outset that I rather wonder at my inclusion in this symposium of distinguished scholars. You may recall that Leo Tolstoy, after his famed religious conversion, wrote confessions in which he repudiated his novels as bad art because they didn't meet his revised moral and philosophical standards. His objection to such works as Anna Karenina and War and Peace was that he had written them merely to entertain his readers. Now I must own that harsh impeachment myself, though I would strike out "merely." In all my work I've been entertaining my readers, or at least trying to, for in my view the fiction art requires it, whatever deeper freight a novel may be said to carry. Nor in that sense have 1 undergone a conversion. Therefore, when Professors Pacy and Wertheimer graciously invited me to deliver one of the learned lectures, I did not feel quite at home with the notion. However, I wanted very much to be here and to pay tribute to my old friend Raul Hilberg. So when they suggested, instead, that I speak at this dinner and give a personal tribute, I was grateful. I will speak very personally, and I trust you will find at the end that this is not a self-indulgence but rather the way I must say the few simple things I want to convey tonight.
